[asterisk-users] Discussion: Are we ready to leave 1.4 behind?

[Paul Belanger]

On 11-05-05 12:30 PM, Ira wrote:
> At 07:56 AM 5/5/2011, you wrote:
>> So how can we fix this? How can we get more people involded? What
>> makes projects like FedoraTesting[3] and DebianTesting[4] popular? How
>> can the Asterisk project reproduce their success?
>
> Well, it's not a lot of people willing to run beta software on their
> phone system. Phones need to work and for most people they need to work
> perfectly all the time. I'm one of those oddities that will always run
> beta software if given the chance but my experience is that quite rare.
>
I am not saying using production servers to test, rather reproducing 
your production setups in a test environment.  You would then create 
test plans or test cases of the features you use in Asterisk.  Once 
documented, for each and every RC of Asterisk you go through the steps 
outlined in your test plan / case, confirming this work as expected and 
then documenting the results.

>> As I've said before, I'm more then willing to help with answering
>> questions about the testsuite or reviewing code that people want to
>> get merged in. We also have an IRC channel, #asterisk-testing
>> available for people to join, ask question, idle, lurk, etc, or if you
>> want to reply to this thread, feel free. But get involved! :)
>
> So I'm the person who has never been able to keep 1.8 alive on my system
> for more than a minute or two and I've probably tried more than 10
> different betas and release versions. I posted a bug report which was
> closed in minutes, I posted the problem on this list every few tries and
> zero response. I tried to figure out mIRC. It's installed on my machine
> but I've never got past that. I just don't get the instructions.
>
Then let's create some instructions; a test case.  If you can only run 
Asterisk 1.8 on a system for no more then two minutes and you have tried 
10 different version, with the proper instructions everybody else can 
reproduce the issue.  More importantly, a developer looking at the issue 
will have the exact steps required to cause the problem.

> I know that all the people involved in the project are Linux heads, but
> some of us, like me, have a Linux box only because of Asterisk and if
> you want my help, you need to make being involved accessible and stop
> assuming we all know what you know. I see the words, "jut post a bug
> report on Mantis" posted all the time and I'm sure it means as little to
> others as it means to me. Maybe there needs to be a web page somewhere,
> "Asterisk beta testing for dummies" so that you can point us to so you
> don't have to answer the stupid questions over and over.
>
Fair enough, what are some examples of questions you have?  It only 
takes a moment to create a new wiki page and start documenting them.  If 
you willing to provide the questions and feedback, I'm more then happy 
to write them on the wiki.

> I've beta tested enough and had enough beta testers to understand the
> kinds of things that make it possible to get bugs fixed, but it's
> usually a very small percentage of users that understand that.
>
+1

-- 
Paul Belanger
Digium, Inc. | Software Developer
twitter: pabelanger | IRC: pabelanger (Freenode)
Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org